Spiderwebs
by LabyrinthDweller
Summary: An early morning crisis, alone with doubts and a mirror. M for sexual themes and nudity.


_Hello yes hi, somewhat personal piece? Trying to put difficult ideas to paper. Not sure if I succeeded. Have a thing._

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Eileen awoke suddenly, cradled gently in a pair of arms and wrapped in the stiff but comfortable covers of a hotel bed. It had been two days from her release from the hospital. All of her belongings were gathered into three cardboard boxes in the far corner. The belongings of the owner of the arms about here were in the opposite corner, but it was only enough to fill one large box.

Her breath stopped as she had to check once again to make sure that yes, it was Henry Townshend, formerly of room 302, holding her naked body in his weary arms. There was relief but it was only slight and fleeting. Her body was cold, very cold against his. She began to shiver as his arms became nothing but queer branches of a lone tree, personified only in her desperate need for comfort. Visions of the early night passed through her mind-she hadn't meant to end up as she was, no. The hotel room had another bed, but it had been rejected perhaps in a moment of mutual weakness. Eileen could not remember details, but what she was trying to recall brewed a peculiar warmth in her neck and stomach, with a dull ache between her legs. She shut her eyes tight, weaving herself deep into a web of despair.

Now that she awoke finding little more than bedsheets between them, was she satisfied? Happy? Safe? She didn't know. At the time she needed it, craved it like a long and brutal withdrawal from something she hadn't meant herself to know. Though she had been blissfully spent at the time, she couldn't recall the carnal drive or any semblance of raw need.

In her mind she knew her triviality was ridiculous and stupid, but it had firmly dug itself a home in her head, and the poisonous words in her head forced her to gently slip away from Henry's slumbering form, leading her to the bathroom where she turned on the sharp light and looked at herself in the mirror.

Her skin was pale and naked, there were scars that she still wasn't used to seeing marring her body, and though she enjoyed being free of bandages and casts she suddenly desperately wished she could have them again if only to cover the memory. In fact, she wanted everything to cover the memory. As she stood there, gazing at her ugly naked form she wanted to scream for all the covers in the world, bandages, casts, clothes, blankets, stone walls, whatever it took to shield her from the terrible world and everyone in it.

Even Henry.

Dear, sweet, dutiful Henry. How she adored him. How she was afraid of him. _Why_? Did she _really_ adore him? This thought bore weight in her mind: of _course_ she loved him and yearned for his presence, the nurses soon found that out in the midst of her trauma and constant night terrors. She felt _so strongly_ for him, and yet she was afraid that she wasn't actually _feeling_ for him, but just an apparition of him in her mind. Yet everything he did reflected the apparition she had constructed, so why would it be any different? It's not like she was _seeking_ a different person, she wouldn't trade him for the world. It was just...she felt so hollow she wondered if what she was feeling she was actually experiencing, and if her feelings were healthy and good.

And oh, how he terrified her. Not for any rational reason, of course, had Eileen been in her right mind she would see that he was only too good of a person, with perhaps the flaw of hermitism and social awkwardness. But, of course, Eileen wasn't in her right mind, and anytime he moved she feared an attack, an attempt to harm her. She had to remind herself that it was him sleeping beside her constantly because she all too often let her mind wander and she would suddenly become overwhelmed with a gripping fear that he was no longer Henry. Even worse, the thought had crossed her mind that though the skin was Henry, the _spirit_ had changed into something much worse, something so pure and evil that Eileen was sure she would never be cured of its presence.

Eileen stared at her scarred breasts, the fading bruises on her formerly broken arm, the deep shadows underneath her eyes, and the wet quiver of her lips. The warmth and lostness of the early night seeped into her mind as she tore her eyes away from the mirror and buried her soiled fingers into her tattered hair. She had loved him, unheedingly, and in the end she was being torn apart. She was being screamed at from all sides; how _dare_ she let down her guard so willingly, how _dare_ she bare herself to someone she had only known by name and face days beforehand? She could be _killed_, _ridiculed_, _rejected_, she was going against every possible bit of advice that her friends and family would've given to her. After all she knew more than most now that she was only a fragile insect in a web of spiders, and she had been bitten already. Poison from that spider would never leave her, she knew, and she would limp with it the rest of her life - she would look at Henry and only see a monster.

Above all, the worst was yet to be determined.

She could now be _with child_.

Once upon a time that might've been a happy occasion even giving the current situation of her lovelife, but with all her background now and the poison from the spider led her to debate death over birth. The idea that she would look into the face of her child and see the spider's poison was too terrible of an idea to bear. Bile rose up in Eileen's throat, and she thought of turning to the side to crouch over the toilet. Managing to swallow though she had begun to cry ugly tears, Eileen kneaded her tortured skin.

The weakest voice in her mind began to whisper calmly. Though her hands were clammy and cold, the voice slowly urged her to imagine warm, big hands softly caressing and only holding her firmly when in an embrace. Eileen managed to take in one smooth breath. Both his and her own gasps intermingled, her body squirming from the sheer amount of emotion, the careful weight of his body on hers, her uncontrollable whimpers and soft cries as the fingers in his hair tightened, she heard and felt it all one more time, both a distant memory and a recent reality.

Eileen bit her wrist, desperately muffling the sound of her sobs so Henry wouldn't hear her. Doubts and malicious taunts blackened her mind. _Did she only love him physically?_ _Slut, whore! Just spread your legs and wait for the next 'knight in shining armor', won't you? No one would even blame you, although no one would ever talk to you long enough to let you know that._

Her knees buckled. Nearly hitting her nose on the edge of the sink, she coughed and looked up again, gazing at her eyes through stringy strands of hair clumped together with cold sweat.

_ Fuck them. Fuck all of them. It wasn't their business whom she slept with, or loved, or both._

Wiping her tears, she shakily gathered her pale, pathetic body together, and shut the bathroom light off. Braving the dark only penetrated by dim city lights through the blinds of the window, Eileen quietly shuffled back to the bed, worming her way back under the covers as discreetly as possible.

Henry's arm moved and wrapped around her shoulder, holding her tight. Eileen felt the tears she had just removed become replaced as they welled up and pooled on her eyelids. She was embarrassed, embarrassed to her core that he had been awake for everything, and had probably heard what she was trying to mask. She gulped, and scrambled to steel herself for his vocal reaction.

He was silent, and after a moment of agonizing hesitation he pulled her closer to his chest. Her cold hands were weakly collected in front of her, feeling the steady _ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump_ of his kind heart. Tears began to quietly stain the pillow beneath her and she sniffed, still struggling to keep a brave face on. His body curled around hers, and she felt that he was trembling as though he was suffering just as she was, whether she was there to see it or not.

Eileen buried her face in his neck, reaching a hand up to his hair, gently massaging to reassure him that she was there and to reassure herself that he was as real as the apparition in her mind.


End file.
